Good morning! Second lady Usha Vance will visit Greenland, a Zuckerberg sister launches a new fund, and a new film about activist Lilly Ledbetter is here on Equal Pay Day.
– Fair pay. Lilly Ledbetter cemented her place on the national political stage in 2008, when she gave a rousing speech at the Democratic National Convention. The former Goodyear employee from Alabama had sued the tire company for employment discrimination in 1998 after she found out she was paid less than her male counterparts over her decades at the company. She initially won more than $3 million in damages from Goodyear, but lost on appeal and then lost again at the Supreme Court on a technicality—the statue of limitations on discrimination had expired, because the time limit was counted from her first paycheck two decades earlier, not her most recent one.
Ledbetter became a surrogate on the 2008 Democratic campaign trail, and when President Barack Obama took office, the first piece of legislation he signed was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which closed the loophole that had prevented Ledbetter from winning her case. Though she never received any money from Goodyear, she became a critical figure supporting Democratic causes—and on days like today, which is Equal Pay Day, marking how far into the year women have to work to earn what men did the year prior.
Ledbetter’s journey from tire-factory worker to Democratic activist is chronicled in the film Lilly, in which the actor Patricia Clarkson plays Ledbetter. After a recent screening of the film in New York City, Clarkson told me that she took the role to help Ledbetter’s story live on—and that her struggle resonated with Clarkson’s own experience fighting for equal pay in Hollywood.
“Oh, I was paid less,” she remembers of her first two decades in the entertainment industry. “I remember fighting it, but I had to give up. I needed a job and I had to work.” She believes the industry has changed. “Hollywood knows it’s under a microscope, and you absolutely cannot pay women less than their male counterpart today,” she says. “You cannot.”
The film’s writer and director, Rachel Feldman, cast Clarkson, who grew up in New Orleans, as she sought to capture Ledbetter’s strength and Southern identity. Lilly weaves together its fictional portrayal with some real footage of figures like Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Hillary Clinton, and others reflecting on Ledbetter’s impact. It chronicles both Ledbetter’s activism—including the harassment she faced, from a ransacked hotel room to a tailed car on the highway—and her personal life, especially her relationship with her husband. (The film is scheduled for theatrical release on May 9.)
Ledbetter died in October 2024, and Clarkson never met her. The actor, when playing a real person, says she prefers to wait to meet them until she has finished shooting the role, not wanting her portrayal to become an imitation. They were set to meet at a film festival last fall, but Ledbetter’s health turned just before that event. “It’s sad, but I have to live with that,” Clarkson says. Ledbetter, however, did see the completed film and “loved it,” Feldman says.
“I never wanted to make a political film. I never wanted to make a film about fair pay. I wanted to make a film about…an ordinary woman who did an extraordinary thing,” Feldman says. “I was interested in: What is the personal cost of activism? What did it cost her family? What did it cost her?”
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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